I'm a Reality TV Producer. Here's What Happens Behind the Scenes

From as far back as I can remember I've been obsessed with reality television. In fact, obsessed is an understatement.

It was a joke among my friends and family that watching it was a personality trait. Every day I would go home and watch the classics like Next and My Super Sweet 16. Whenever something new came out, I always viewed at least one episode.

I never understood that reality TV could be a job, so when I left high school I did a dance conservatoire at NYU and was around people who were super passionate about it—which quickly made me realize that I was not.

For a while, I dabbled in event production and eventually found myself running marketing for a boutique dance fitness studio in New York City.

Three weeks into the job I thought: "These people are so talented, they're so beautiful, they're so complex. This is a reality show."

Everything clicked.

I Googled: "How to make a reality show", went to a camera store, rented equipment, and asked my boss if I could create what is known as a sizzle reel, to try to sell a show about the company.

As long as I was not filming during work hours, she agreed, so I started staying after work—from 8 p.m. to midnight—and spending weekends interviewing the staff of the company, who were all aspiring dancers.

I used iMovie—which is certainly not my editing platform of choice now—to put together a sizzle, and figured out which production companies in New York I could pitch to. I wasn't taking no for an answer.

I found myself in pitches with real companies at only 23 years old, and had to fake it till I made it. I was just speaking from a place of passion; I loved watching all these shows and knew the genre through and through.

Luckily, I found myself in a room with Aaron Rothman, the founder of Haymaker East, who saw something in the idea. The pitch quickly turned into me fangirling over his career and asking about his experience—he had worked at ABC on early seasons of The Bachelor.

We talked for two and a half hours, and Aaron saw how passionate I was. He ended up not only buying my original idea, but offering me a job. I've been with Haymaker ever since.

While my first idea never sold to series, I have since executive produced various shows including Bravo's Southern Hospitality, Amazon Prime's Forever Summer Hamptons, and Our 2 Moms for TLC.

The first show I worked on for Haymaker was Forever Summer Hamptons, and I was very much thrust into it.

Prime Video execs were looking for something in the lifestyle space, and we were super intrigued by what locals of the Hamptons called "citiots"—people who come for the summer, usually right out of high school, trying to find themselves.

I was reaching out to all these kids, trying to find organic, real relationships between them, and we found a community of incredible people. Once again, I put together a pitch tape and managed to sell the series to Prime Video a few years ago.

Social media is such an amazing tool while finding candidates for reality TV; I am constantly messaging and commenting trying to track people down. But we don't choose influencers. It's people with 200 or 300 followers, who are part of an interesting world.

For example, we found a urologist in Chicago, who is also an incredible dancer, on Instagram. I've never been interested in urology; that's not a show I might watch, but I saw something in her. I messaged her, we started talking, and eventually that ended up as the TLC special Dr. Down Below.

What we're mainly looking for is someone who's willing to share it all. All of our stories are totally real—nothing is ever scripted—so you need to be an open book. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Because we're unscripted, sometimes the content isn't massively dramatic. There are companies that are a little more heavy-handed, but we just don't believe in that. We want to tell real stories, which sometimes are just not as compelling; sometimes they're a little softer.

If a reality show has run for ten seasons, naturally some of those seasons won't be as entertaining as others, but I hope that as a viewer you commit to the people because they're being authentically themselves.

From the jump of a show, you're diving into someone's real life, and sometimes you're dealing with some pretty heavy stuff and vulnerability, over a long-term period. I really do become immersed in these worlds and people, and get so close with them. Often I'm half producer, half therapist.

In terms of protecting our cast, there are a lot of protocols that I don't even touch. People with immense education ensure the mental wellbeing of every participant in every show we do, no matter the genre.

We have to be really safe, because they're real people, and these are real things that are happening. We feel blessed that they open their lives up to us, but we have therapists and screenings, so if someone isn't fit for TV, they can't participate in the shows. Mental health is of utmost priority, especially at our company.

Doing my job, there's never a dull day. I can be in Las Vegas running around the Strip with a drag queen, or interviewing a 2-year-old in New Jersey.

I see it all, so when I'm with the urologist in Chicago, I'm watching surgery live. Everything you're seeing, I'm watching it 100 times more vividly. I'm seeing all sides of it, up close and personal.

It's cheesy, but I feel really lucky to have found what I love at my age. My grandpa would always say: "If you love what you do, it never feels like work." I never understood what that meant until I found this.

As a female in the unscripted industry, I love to be around talented women—no matter what I do, I am looking to work with other women.

For example, I was recently in Los Angeles shooting a pilot, and hired a female camera operator I had met the year prior, because it's so rare to find a woman working in such a male-dominated field.

One day, I would love to have some sort of community of women who are able to come together and collaborate on ideas. That's not to say there's not already amazing female titans of our industry; I just want to continue to nurture that.

Ultimately, I'm only five years into what I hope is a very long career, and I feel really lucky to have accelerated so far into this industry. We've done so many shows, and have so much more exciting stuff coming up, but I hope I'm doing this for the next 40 years.

I hope to be where some of the people that I look up to are, and have careers that look like theirs one day. I have the utmost respect for these trailblazers in the industry, and I hope to be that for someone else one day.

Jesse Light is head of development at Haymaker East Content. She is executive producer for multiple reality television series' including Southern Hospitality, Southern Charm, Forever Summer Hamptons, Our 2 Moms and Dr. Down Below.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

As told to Newsweek's My Turn associate editor, Monica Greep.

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